Seven years after the Varsity Blues scandal that saw parents like Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin scamming to get their kids into elite colleges by bribing coaches to recruit them as athletes or using fraudulent test scores, the wealthy are still using niche sports to give their kids unfair — though not illegal — advantages.
asserted
wealthy → see → advantages
“Families definitely come to me and say, ‘You know what? I want my child to be a recruited athlete,'” boutique college admissions counselor Chris Rim told The Post.
asserted
Rim → come → what
“They know [certain sports] require really specialized and expensive coaching and equipment, and I think they think that it’s going to make them stand out.”
asserted
them → know → coaching
Top schools need to fill their squash, fencing, rowing, sailing, golf, water polo, and skiing teams.
asserted
schools → need → teams
And they do — often with recruited athletes who need to clear far lower academic hurdles than their peers thanks to their specialized athletic skills.
asserted
who → do → skills
With Ivy League admission rates in the low single digits — for the class of 2030, Yale accepted just 4% of applicants — the ultra-privileged are exploiting this fact, signing junior up for fencing lessons and club water polo before he’s lost all of baby teeth.
asserted
he → accept → teeth
Rim, founder and CEO of Command Education, says that clients now start their kids in hyper-specialized sports as early as third or fourth grade.
asserted
clients → say → grade
“It’s a strategy that families might use if they notice early on, like, ‘Hey, my child is not really gonna be the best academic student,'” Rim said.
uncertain
Rim → ’ → that
“They’re like, ‘Is crew really going to be the best thing? Or is it going to be lacrosse?
asserted
it → ’re → ?
Or is it going to be squash?'”
asserted
it → go → ?
At Harvard, a full 86% of recruited athletes applying to the school ended up being admitted, compared with just 6% of non-recruited applicants.
asserted
% → recruit → applicants
One study of almost 400,000 NCAA athletes at more than 1,000 colleges found that the sports with the most disproportionate representation of players coming from top-1% income earning zip codes were squash, sailing, fencing, water polo, rowing and lacrosse.
asserted
sports → find → codes
The study showed that more than half of athletes from Ivy-plus schools came from private high schools.
asserted
half → show → schools
The researchers also found disproportionate wealth among student athletes was observable at “other elite private” schools they identified, including Georgetown, Northwestern, WashU, Rice, Carnegie Mellon and Notre Dame.
asserted
they → find → Georgetown
At my alma mater, the Lawrenceville School, a boarding school in New Jersey notorious for sending huge chunks of their graduating class to Ivy League universities, there were squash courts and swimming pools and even a golf course — allowing students to pursue the most niche sports possible.
asserted
students → send → sports
Substacker and data scientist Joe Hovde recently analyzed the rosters of Ivy League sports teams to see how many students come from elite schools.
asserted
students → analyze → schools
He found that 28 of the top high schools, which educate just 0.14% of America’s high schoolers, made up 7% of Ivy League athletes — a roughly fifty-fold overrepresentation.
asserted
which → find → athletes
One in eight Ivy League ice hockey players came from one of those top schools, he found, and one in ten lacrosse and crew players could say the same.
uncertain
players → come → same
It’s a pipeline well-resourced parents are aware of — and one that exacerbates inequality, Rim said.
asserted
Rim → ’ → inequality
“You need to have the resources and programming available…
asserted
resources → need → ?
You need facilities, you need an incredible coach.
asserted
you → need → coach
So, if you don’t have the resources, you’re not really exposed to it and don’t have the same opportunities.”
asserted
you → have → opportunities
Meanwhile, a study by Raj Chetty, David Deming and John Friedman in the “Quarterly Journal of Economics” found that, at Ivy-plus universities, only 5% of students whose families were in the bottom 60% income distribution were recruited athletes, compared with 13% from the top 1% wealthiest families.
asserted
families → find → families
We already know that rich kids disproportionately benefit from extra tutoring, help on essays, connections, legacy status, and parental donations.
asserted
kids → know → essays
With enough money and the right strategy, Ivy League admissions can be transformed from a long shot to a real possibility.
asserted
admissions → transform → possibility
The Aporia
